


A White Sky At Midnight

by nah_tho



Series: Dumb Interspecies Relations [12]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Deicide, Divine War, Domestic Violence, M/M, a divine coup, divine domestic violence, heavier than anything i've brought before, heaviest mood, i fucking guess, there you go a03 a new insane tag, welcome to the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-23 10:06:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18150446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nah_tho/pseuds/nah_tho
Summary: Tragedy doesn't RSVP.It happened on a Tuesday.





	A White Sky At Midnight

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this last July and never looked at it again
> 
> i expected to hate it and want to change a bunch of shit. instead i just made myself cry
> 
> edit: whoops sneak preview of nah's next bullshit down below

There was nothing to prepare him for it, because unlike in the stories bards spun out of the great exploits of heroes and adventurers, reality rarely offered its victims foreshadowing for the tumult to come.

It happened on an absolutely unremarkable Tuesday in early autumn, at the absolutely unremarkable hour of eleven-twenty-two in the evening, while Taako was doing the absolutely unremarkable task of signing admissions letters for the winter semester so Ren could mail them to their intended recipients.

There was absolutely nothing happening, and no reason to suspect something might.

When Brad called him, he was just happy for the interruption to his tedium.

 _“Taako, are you there?”_ His voice sounded tinny and thin. This was nothing unusual.

Taako set down his quill and dug the Stone out from under a pile of long-ignored proposals for the school Ren had sent him to review. “Yeah, my man, what’s up?”

 _“I’m sorry if you’re busy-”_ Brad started to say, and Taako laughed.

“Naw, cha boy’s not doing anything he can’t do another time,” he said, which, while true, was the excuse he’d been using to avoid doing it since Ren had sent them to him in the first place. “What’s on your mind?”

There was a pause it honestly didn’t occur to Taako to question. He just assumed Brad was momentarily distracted. There was a lot of reasons for unexplained gaps in conversations. _“I’m really sorry, I just- I couldn’t think of anyone else to contact that wouldn’t be busy, and I- I just didn’t want to bother anyone-”_

It was at this moment that he started to get the prickling feeling something might be wrong. He barely felt the smile fade from his mouth. “What’s up? You okay, my man?”

_“Taako, it is night, right?”_

It was such an absurd, unexpected question that he found himself looking out the window to be sure. “Uh… yeah?”

A long, weird pause followed that, long enough that he pulled the Stone away from his mouth to be sure the signal hadn’t been interrupted or he hadn’t switched it off by accident.

_“The sky is white.”_

For a moment, he had absolutely no idea what Brad meant. He knew all the words he was using, but together they made no sense.

The moment was just that: a moment. A cold pit opened up in his guts as soon what Brad had said sunk in. “…What?” His own voice sounded very small and distant.

_“The sky is white above the quad. No one else seems to see it. It’s just… pure white, and no one seems to care. I think I might be losing my mind.”_

For all of his failings as both a person and academic, Taako had one thing in his corner: when something interested him, he remembered it. It was just when it didn’t that the trouble started.

And he remembered being told an interesting story about a white sky before.

“It was… was it sixteen days?” he mumbled to himself. Cold panic was creeping along his scalp. “Does that even matter?”

 _“What?”_ Brad sounded like he was trying very hard not to seem frightened.

“Don’t worry about it,” Taako told him. “When did this start?”

 _“I don’t know- I was in my quarters until a few minutes ago. I came up to speak to Avi and- the sky is white, Taako. The whole sky is white.”_ It was unmistakable now: Brad was absolutely terrified. _“Tell me this is normal- tell me this isn’t something I need to worry about-”_

“That is deffo, for sure, _one hundo percent_ _not normal_ , _Brad_ ,” he shrieked, voice rising in pitch and volume so rapidly that Kravitz popped his head into the study. Taako gestured for him to wait. “I’m pretty fucking sure it’s reasonable for you to worry right now, my guy! Where are you?” he demanded.

_“I’m still in the quad-”_

“You need to go home!” Taako told him, slapping his hand on the surface of his desk urgently even though Brad couldn’t see him do it. “You need to talk to your aunt about this- this same shit happened to _her_ , remember-”

 _“-no reason for Grummsh and the Cave Mother to fight over me-”_ Brad was protesting. He kept moving away from his Stone’s mouthpiece. Taako wondered if he was trying not to stare at the sky. _“-has to be some sort of mistake-”_

“Go home! Go fucking _home_!” Taako yelled, and then, without thinking, added, “I’ll come with you- I’m pretty sure this is not the sort of bad fucking business you should be alone for-” From where he was lingering in the door, Kravitz was starting to look very concerned.

 _“-wait for you to get here-”_ Brad said, sounding distracted, and then the call ended just as suddenly as it had began.

“What’s going on?” Kravitz asked, reaching out to touch his arm, eyebrows furrowed. “Do you need-”

“I need to get to the moon right _fucking now_ , Krav,” Taako told him, “can you-?”

“It’s against protocol, but I’m sure the Raven Queen will understand,” Kravitz said, already summoning his scythe. “What is it that’s happening, Taako?”

“This isn’t really the fucking _time_ ,” he snapped, and then groaned. “It’s an orc god thing- there’s some fucked up shit with Brad’s goddess and her man and she dished on it to me, and-”

Kravitz’ flesh melted off his bones almost too fast to see. His posture was incredibly stiff. “You’ve been in direct contact with Luthic?”

“We don’t have time for this,” Taako argued. Kravitz loomed over him.

“You will _make_ time for this, Taako,” he said, voice sharp, “this is much more serious than Brad having some sort of breakdown, and I need to know what I’m walking into. When did Luthic contact you?”

“After the birthday party,” Taako said frantically. “Please, can we just _go-_ ”

“While you were at the _stronghold_? And you never thought to mention it to me?” Kravitz demanded. “Taako, I am an emissary of the Raven Queen- I can’t involve myself in divine disputes without her consent.”

“Please, Krav,” Taako begged, grabbing the front of his suit. “Please. Just take me to him, we’ll figure it out from there, just _please_ \- he legit might fucking _die_ -”

If Kravitz’ had still been in possession of lips in that moment, Taako suspected they wouldn’t been pressed tightly together. “I’ll take you to the base, but that’s all I can do for you, and-”

“Thank you, thanks, now let’s just-’” Taako started to say. Kravitz fixed him with a stare.

“And,” he continued, “as soon you’re back, we are going to have a very long and uncomfortable conversation about exactly how you managed to get yourself involved in the affairs of gods you have no reason to be communicating with. And you _will_ come back to me alive, Taako.” His skin was starting to crawl back over his exposed bones. Taako saw his half-formed throat bob as he swallowed reflexively. “If you die there, I can’t come for you. Not when it’s something like this. So you have to come back to me alive.”

A chill crept over Taako’s arms, making the fine pale hair on them stand on end. For a fraction of a second, the worst, most mercenary part of him considered just leaving Brad to his fate. “I’m not gonna die, Krav,” he said.

Kravitz touched his cheek with a cold hand and kissed him. It wasn’t a deep kiss, nor a particularly long one. It felt almost like he was trying to make sure he remembered what it felt like. “Please be careful, Taako,” he whispered, and then opened a rift. “Come back to me.”

Taako forced himself to smile. “You’re not getting rid of me that easy, Bones,” he joked.

***

He arrived in a nearly-empty quad under a beautifully starlit sky, and for a moment, he had the bizarre feeling that Brad was playing a prank on him.

That was before he saw him.

Brad was standing in the middle of the quad, head tilted back, just staring upwards. He barely seemed to be breathing.

“Brad,” Taako called, sprinting across the grass towards him. Brad didn’t seem to notice. “Bradson!” That did it, but only just: Brad turned slowly to look at him, and for a second, almost didn’t seem to understand why he was there.

“Taako?” He was still holding his Stone, still had it raised like he was about to speak into it.

“We need to go,” Taako told him, trying to push him towards the hangar. It took Brad a moment to comply, and until he did, it was like trying to move a wall. He was still walking slowly, head uplifted, no matter how hard Taako shoved at him.

“Why is this happening to me?”

It was so uncharacteristically small that Taako almost didn’t hear it, and it took him longer than it might have to understood what it was that Brad had said. “I don’t know, some fuckery, probably,” he grunted, and then raced around to face him. “Look at me,” he demanded, and Brad did, albeit slowly. “You need to stop panicking and listen: we’re going to the hangar, we’re going to get in a bubble, and we’re going to go to your home so we can find out what the fuck is going on and fix it, okay? Just keep your eyes on me and let’s go.”

Brad just stared at him before nodding.

“Okay, my guy?” Taako prompted again, walking backwards and waving for Brad to follow.

“Okay,” Brad confirmed, and started moving more purposefully. Every time it looked like his eyes were about drift upwards again, Taako snapped his fingers and pointed at himself.

“Eyes on me,” he repeated as they entered the hangar.

“Hey, Taako, I didn’t see you- holy shit, Brad, you doing okay, buddy?” Taako flapped a hand aggressively at Avi to step off, almost hitting him in the process.

“You’re sending us where we need to go and no, we don’t have time to explain why,” he snapped, ushering Brad into one of the spheres. “ _Now_ ,” he snarled when Avi opened his mouth to respond.

“I still need to know _where_ you’re going-” he protested, looking simultaneously bewildered and disturbed.

Before Taako could say anything, Brad started reciting numbers. It sounded almost mechanical.

Avi looked startled. “You’re going home?” His eyes darted over to Taako. “And you’re going with him?”

“ _Now, dipshit_ ,” Taako snarled, climbing into the sphere and closing it. He buckled in hastily to the seat with access to the landing mechanism before craning his head over his shoulder to make sure Brad had done the same.

He barely heard Avi’s prelaunch script- he knew it was over when they started moving.

As soon as they were clear of the hangar, Brad’s eyes were trained on the horizon beyond him.

Taako slapped his hand against his seat. “Eyes on me, Bradson,” he repeated. “Stay with me. We don’t have time for you to freak out.”

The trip felt impossibly long. No matter how often he checked, they never seemed to get any closer. Forests and lakes flashed by beneath them, but nothing looked familiar yet.

He wasn’t sure how long it was before Brad spoke.

“I’m sorry, Taako.”

Taako looked back at him, startled. “For what? You gonna puke?”

Brad tried to smile. It didn’t quite make it to his eyes. “I’m sure this isn’t how you pictured your evening going,” he said quietly.

Taako froze for a second before staring at him. “Bradson, you’re lucky you’re back there and I’m up here because if you were closer, I’d slap you,” he scolded. “Is this, like, my ideal Tuesday? Obviously no,” he ranted, squinting at the horizon to see if they were almost at their destination. “But I’d rather be here and having kind of a bad time than find out afterwards all this shit went down and you didn’t call me because you thought I’d have, I don’t know, better things to do? Don’t be a piece of shit.”

“Pull the lever,” Brad said.

 Taako looked at him again. “What?”

A little of Brad’s usual self was creeping back, but it was mostly in the form of alarm unrelated to the sky apparently having turned white in his eyes. “Pull the lever,” he said again, this time more urgently.

Taako fumbled with it for a moment and then pulled it, but it was rapidly becoming obvious that he’d done so later than ideal: they were losing altitude but still barrelling towards the ground at a speed the magic it used to slow itself wasn’t quite adequate to offset.

They hit the top of one side of the red-walled canyon so hard the sphere they were in actually rebounded and hit the other before rolling to a halt on the canyon floor.

Taako hung upside down in his seat for a moment, listening to the glass popping and crackling and looking at the spiderweb of cracks spreading along the side of the sphere.

He heard the thump of Brad releasing himself from his seat and scrambled to do the same.

“Not Taako’s best landing,” he tried to joke, only to find Brad already outside the vehicle.

No matter how hard he stared, the only thing Taako saw when he looked up at the open space between the canyon walls was a blue-black velvet sky littered with near and distant stars, some of which he’d seen firsthand, two of which where the suns of a home he’d never return to. It was a bittersweet sight, but not a frightening one.

Whatever Brad was seeing, it seemed to terrify him into near-paralysis.

Taako snapped his fingers under his nose. “On me, Bradson,” he said, walking backwards and beckoning Brad to follow again. “We’re almost there.”

They were, and the closer they got, the clearer it became that whatever was happening to Brad was not isolated to him. The normally night-busy hive of the stronghold was eerily silent. The huge resin-black doors before them sat open and unattended.

Brad’s face went grey with fear. “Why is this happening?” he asked again, looking at Taako like he hoped he might have the answer.

“Deffo some fuckery,” Taako told him firmly. “Come on, big guy, let’s go find my drinking buddy, huh? Sound good?”

They didn’t have far to go to find her: it could be said she’d found them. They’d barely crossed the central courtyard when she limped up to them, leaning heavily on a dark wooden staff as thick as his arm.

“Hey babe, you got a second-?” he started to ask, but not before she lunged at Brad, grabbing him by the front of his dress shirt, and started rattling out a veritable machinegun spread of Orcish so quick he wasn’t sure he’d have been able to understand it even if he had spoken the language.

With his focus on Brad broken, Taako realized something: all around them were orcs, and all of them were staring up at the sky. The courtyard was littered with them.

Looking at them, he realized something else: some of them actually seemed not to be breathing at all. He watched one close her eyes and sink to her knees before collapsing face-first onto the ground, too still and limp to be anything but dead. No one around her seemed to notice.

He stared at her, frozen, and suddenly she gasped and climbed to her feet, casting around for some unseen attacker, seeming momentarily almost normal until her head lifted and she went still again, just staring at that unseen sky.

Behind him, someone else fell.

His blood ran cold.

“Why are they all out here?” he muttered, and then looked over at Mh’arakta. She seemed to be the only other person not gripped by some paralytic fear. Even Brad seemed to be struggling not stare upwards, no matter how she cursed and slapped at him. “Hey! Why the fuck are they all out here? What’s going on?” he demanded in Goblin.

She looked at him, wild-eyed, and uttered a cry of such unmistakably desperate hope that it tore at his heart to have to hear. It occurred to him as she grabbed at him that she must not have even noticed he was there. “Elf Taako!” she barked, stumbling and nearly dropping her staff as she hauled him closer. “You must be here to help us. You must help us,” she begged, and his guts churned, because there was something unbearably sad and wrong about seeing this proud, powerful, ancient orc reduced to it. “You must help us.” Her brilliant dark eyes were shining with distress. A part of him had the bizarre thought that he wasn’t sure if orcs could cry.

 “Yeah, yeah, cha boy’s here to help,” he assured her. “What am I supposed to do?” He saw, in that moment, two things: the first was her face fall, and he knew she had put all her hopes in the impossible chance he was the one who knew how to fix this.

The second, over Mh’arakta’s shoulder, was Brad stop breathing.

“DON’T YOU _FUCKING DARE, BRADSON!”_ he shrieked, so loudly it tore his throat raw and echoed down the canyon for what must’ve been miles.

Brad jumped, gasping, and then whipped around to look at him. He seemed extremely startled.

“I’ll kill you _myself_ if you die on me here,” he threatened nonsensically, and for a split-second, it looked like Brad was going to laugh.

Mh’arakta shook him. “Elf Taako, we must hurry,” she said urgently.

“I know!” he yelled, trying to shake her back out of frustration. Applied to an elderly orc as opposed to a relatively young one, his efforts were slightly more successful. “I don’t know the _fuck_ is happening, though, what the hell am I supposed to do here?”

“It is _Grummsh_! He is punishing her! He is punishing our Mother,” Mh’arakta told him. “She has challenged his supremacy. He is trying to call us to him, to make her fight her children, to make her suffer for her crime against him. He is trying to make her concede with grief because he knows he cannot match her ferocity! It cannot be, Elf Taako,” she told him, grip so tight on his arms she was nearly lifting him off his feet, “she cannot defend both us and herself from him, but the Mother of orcs _must not fall_ -”

There was a terrible second where he thought her sudden stillness and silence meant she, like the other orcs around her, was about to die, and then she spoke and her voice was immense and impossible.

 ** _“Aid my children in their hour of need, child of elves.”_ **Mh’arakta’s eyes were as glossy and as black as an animal’s. She did not blink. Though she was speaking, she didn’t seem to be breathing.

The air was so still it almost seemed like time had stopped. He felt and heard and tasted the pungency of ancient magic.

“I mean, yeah, that’s why I’m here, I guess,” he said uncertainly.

 ** _“You must sink into the waters of my womb so I may call you to my aid. You must bathe yourself in-”_** She uttered a word of such soundless immensity that his skull ached. **_“I had expected better of him than this foul trickery. He will not have anticipated mine. Come to me, Taako, child of elves.”_**

At that, Mh’arakta was gasping. Her iron grip on him loosened.

He bolted for the main building, having no real idea where he was going but knowing he had to get there quickly. Behind him, Mh’arakta cried out words he couldn’t understand.

He raced through halls, past terrified-looking orc children who couldn’t seem to decide whether they should fight or hide, all of whom seemed terrified of the prospect of going outside. He vaulted over an older-looking orc without legs who was trying gamely to claw her way to the door.

He realized, with growing horror, that he was horribly lost, and that there was nothing to do for it but get so lost he found what he was looking for: he didn’t know where he was going. He barely understood what he was looking for.

He turned a corner and sprinted directly into a waist-deep pool of water.

He froze, staring at it as it glowed faintly, ripples and reflections dancing on the walls and ceiling.

The baths. He’d found the baths. It was worth a try. She’d said something about water.

He waded out of the one he’d stumbled into and into the deepest one he could find. He didn’t even bother removing his clothing. As his boots dragged him beneath the surface, it occurred to him to regret not wearing his Cloak of the Manta Ray. Finally would’ve gotten some use out of it, he thought cynically.

He seemed to sink far deeper than should’ve been possible, until the surface was a narrow ring at the end of a long, dark tunnel. He couldn’t hold his breath anymore. As it burst out of him, he realized it: even if he were to kick off his boots now and swim for the surface, he’d never make it before he started choking.

He also knew Water Breathing, he realized. He was an idiot, and now it was too late.

He couldn’t stop himself: he took a breath.

***

_He knew she was bleeding. She stank of blood and magic._

**_‘Come to me,’_ ** _she called, wordless and unmistakable. **‘Defend me so I may defend my children.’**_

The sky was a nightmare.

He understood, all at once, why Brad had seemed incapable of preventing himself from staring at it.

It was nothingness. It was a void of impossibly bright yet utterly lightless white that spanned the whole of the sky and every horizon. It was both infinitely vast and horribly immediate in a way that made him feel claustrophobic and agoraphobic simultaneously. The whole world seemed to be lit with some unbearably flat, colourless, sourceless light. There were no shadows, no reflections. Bile rose in his throat.

He wasn’t sure where he was. He was standing on a wet and blasted battlefield, littered with broken war machines and dead orcs. They didn’t seem to be rotting, but no one had bothered to bury them- those who were covered at all looked like it was simply that enough mud had been tracked over them to create a barrier between them and that white sky. He wondered how far down the bodies went and suddenly felt sick.

There didn’t seem to be trees or hills or anything at all in the distance: everything was just flat. A flat sky over a flat wasteland paved with death.

He walked without really knowing where he was walking. He walked until he heard shouting and saw movement.

Even now, there were orcs. Some seemed confused. Some were fighting each other. A peal of black thunder struck a distant mountain.

A mountain on a flat wasteland. A mountain with one huge white pit of an eye and one black socket. He watched it roar and reel back. The ground shook beneath him as it stumbled. Orcs scattered around its feet. One was almost stepped on.

He could taste the stink of dread on his tongue. Cold sweat was rolling down his back.

None of them had noticed him. They were all focused in on one point: some attacking, others defending. As he crept closer, heart thundering in his chest, he realized what it was.

It was the mouth of a cave. A narrow black hole in the churned mud of the ground. There were crags of shattered rock around some of the edges, almost like something had once stood above them before being blasted and beaten into flatness.

He cast Greater Invisibility on himself and dodged past feet and ducked under hammers and tripped out of the way of blades. An axe clipped him, shearing off a bit of hair. He nearly soiled himself.

A few orcs nearer to him paused, nostrils flaring. He’d seen that look before.

“Yolo,” he muttered, and leapt in.

***

He had no idea how long he rolled and slid down that hole. He didn’t really recognize when it was that he landed on her, either, just that one moment he was falling, and the next, he had fistfuls of sticky, matted fur in each hand. Her breathing was laboured, and she shook beneath him. He knew why.

He couldn’t see them, but he could hear them: all around him in the absolute dark of her refuge, orcs were shouting- attacking her, attacking each other. He couldn’t tell. Everything was echoing.

Beneath him, her side rose with a shuddering breath. “What the hell am I supposed to do now?” he hissed, feeling both ridiculous and utterly terrified. He was suddenly unsure why he’d decided this was a good idea.

She did not answer him.

It sounded like someone was approaching. He stared in the direction it seemed to be coming from and panicked.

The first bolt of his Magic Missile seemed to bring a temporary hush as its glittering light illuminated what was happening. In the moments before it hit, he saw them.

And they saw him. He didn’t even have time to scream or make a joke before it hit and the light went out, and then he was firing wildly, trying to aim by the brief glimpses his previous shots afforded him, trying not to hit her, trying not to lose his mind at the knowledge that they were all closing in on him.

It wasn’t long before he was starting to run low on spell slots- he felt himself flagging. They’d driven him to the stone wall of the chamber, and he pressed back against it, trying not to breathe too loudly as they hunted him in the absolute darkness of that impossible cavern.

A hundred years spent exploring the stars and this was how it was going to end: in a dark hole in some terrible place he didn’t understand, far, far away from everyone he had ever loved.

He’d broken his promise, he realized. He was never going to see Kravitz again. Or Brad. Or Magnus. Or Merle. Lucretia. Davenport. Barry.

“Lup.”

He was never going to see Lup again.

He was going to die here, and she would never understand what had happened to him, because Kravitz wouldn’t know, and Brad’s entire clan would be dead. She’d search, just like he had.

Except she would never find him. There would be no skeleton. No umbrella. No reunion. No more dinners with her and Barry. No more jokes about each other’s sex lives.

No more Lup.

Not this time.

He was never going to see his sister again.

Later, when pressed, he wouldn’t even be able to explain what exactly it was that he’d done, just that he he’d done something, and it was something _big_.

There was no planning to it, no thought behind it.

It was just that in that moment, at that tiny, fleeting thought, his entire being screamed. Everything he was. Everything he ever had been.

Everything that was anything that had ever been a part of the whirling mess that was Taako came together, just the once in his life, and agreed on one single thing:

This was not how this story ended.

Somewhere, Istus looked down at what she was knitting and smiled.

***

His first thought was that he must not have died because Kravitz was there.

His second was about how ironic that first thought had been.

Kravitz looked exhausted. His face kept going gaunt like he didn’t quite have the energy to either maintain his human form or get upset enough to drop it entirely.

He was talking to someone.

“-don’t know if he’s ever going to wake up, Lup-”

If he was talking to her, she had to be there. He wanted to see her.

“-let him go _if you knew it might get him killed, Kravitz?_ What the _fuck_ is _wrong with you_ -”

He was just so tired. He could barely open his eyes.

“-it’s _Taako_ , you know I couldn’t have stopped him if I’d-”

He couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore.

***

Lucretia was reading to him.

“-you might want an update on how Brad’s clan is doing, Taako.”

Her voice was so heavy, so serious, just like it always was. He wanted to tell her to lighten up.

“Last time I came to see you, I told you there were sixteen confirmed dead and twenty-five reported missing. I’m pleased to say time has corrected this sad estimation, at least in part: twenty-one of the missing persons were found in the tunnels beneath the stronghold. It would appear that those who were working in them at the time panicked and became lost at the onset of the event, and some of the children who were abandoned by their affected caretakers wandered into the tunnels by accident. I’m told they’re all in good health, aside from some minor malnutrition and a couple of contusions from running into walls or tripping in the dark. With any luck, the last four will emerge as well, in time.”

It did not escape him that she had neglected to mention how Brad himself was doing. Even through his fog of lethargy, anxiety welled up in his chest.

“At my request, Goldcliff has provided the stronghold with guards while they recover, but despite their initial severity, the raid attempts by their goblin neighbours have lessened in both frequency and intensity over the last few weeks-”

***

“Hey buddy. Uhh. Lucretia says you might be able to hear me? She said I should come talk to you, keep you company, tell you what’s new.”

He should have gotten around to teaching Magnus volume control. He still had no indoor voice.

“So… uh, Mireena is having puppies soon, I guess you wouldn’t know that, huh? And Davenport brought me a stray he found curled up in his boat somewhere, so we’re trying to get that little guy on his feet again. I think I might call him Philip. What do you think of that, Taako?”

Taako thought that was a stupid thing to name a dog, but that had never prevented Magnus before.

“Carey says I should name him after you, just in case you die.”

Taako found that both offensive and morbid.

“…You’re not going to die, are you, Taako? Elves are supposed to live pretty much forever, right? So… don’t die. Don’t die, okay?”

***

He got his eyes open again.

He was alone.

What even was the point of all that effort, then, he thought, and closed them again.

 

***

He could smell Merle before he could hear him: he was all dirt and salt water and the odd vegetal pungency of a thousand unidentifiable plants.

He didn’t say anything. Pages rustled in whatever he was reading, and his arm creaked sometimes when he turned them.

Once or twice he laughed but didn’t bother to say at what.

Taako hated it when he did that.

***

Someone was touching his face.

It was over too fast for him to figure out who.

He thought it was pretty rude of them not to identify themself.

***

“Lup’s out with Lucretia, so I guess right now might be a pretty good time to talk, huh, Taako?”

Barry wanted to have a heart-to-heart. He wasn’t sure how that was going to work when one of them had a heart that he wasn’t sure was beating and the other had been grown in a vat.

“Look, Taako, I’m going to be straight with you: no matter what Lup says, I have… no idea if you’re still in there. I’ve never seen anything like this before. Not anywhere we’ve been, and you know… you know it better than most people. I’ve seen a lot of things. This… this shouldn’t even be possible.”

He wasn’t sure how to take that.

“Just know… we haven’t given up on you. Lup’s never going to give up on you.”

His heart ached. He wanted to see her. He resented Barry for being there without her.

“Heh. You want to hear something funny, Taako? The night it happened, we were in bed, and suddenly, she just… she just went quiet. If she wasn’t already a lich, I would’ve thought she’d died.”

He didn’t see how that was supposed to be funny.

“She doesn’t remember it, but I do. I think maybe that’s when it happened, y’know? I think she knew, somehow, and… maybe it’s unscientific of me to say this, but wherever the hell you were, Taako, I think, just for a few seconds… I think she was with you.”

***

Davenport and Merle were playing cards.

He knew it was Davenport because Merle kept trying to convince him to use Taako as a card table, and Davenport kept sighing. Taako could almost see him shaking his head.

“-hate that, right? At this point, I don’t think it’s love that’s going to wake him up, but maybe if we just _piss him off_ enough-”

As soon as he was able, he decided, he was going to replace all those plants Merle loved so much with carnivorous ones.

***

“Hey babe.”

Kravitz was stroking his hair. He wished he’d lay down beside him and just hold him.

“I know it’s probably selfish of me to say this, but… wake up soon, okay? The house feels so empty without you.”

He laughed.

“You’re going to be so angry when you come home. The kitchen’s a mess, Taako.”

He was not especially concerned with that, given the circumstances.

“I know I don’t need to eat, it’s just… I miss you so much, babe. I tried cooking one of your recipes just so that it would feel a little more like you were around. I know you probably think that makes me a sap. And yeah, it turned out all wrong, you don’t have to say it.”

He sounded like he was trying very hard to keep it together. Taako wanted to hold him.

“I know I told you to come back alive, but… this isn’t what I meant, babe. Please come back to me, Taako. I miss you.”

***

“-for the _last time_ , Lup, we can’t turn him lich unless he’s actively engaged in the ritual- what do you mean, ‘that sounds like quitter talk’? Lup, we’ve talked about this- you can’t just resort to name calling and insults whenever I tell you something you don’t want to hear-”

***

“Hey idiot. Wake up.”

It took him a second to place the voice, but he could smell the breath of whoever was speaking. They had to be only inches away from his face.

“Uh, Care, I don’t think this is what Magnus had in mind when he-”

He knew that voice immediately. There was something memorable about a woman whose first impression involved animating a grinder and being glued to a wall by spiderwebs.

“Magnus keeps crying in the middle of practice. That’s a fucking downer, and you’re shitty for making him feel bad. I know you can wake up anytime you want to. You’re just loving the attention, aren’t you? Hurry up and stop being such a drama queen-”

***

Someone traced a fingertip down the bridge of his nose, over his chin, along his jaw. It was a weird way to touched. Careful. Hesitant, even.

He wanted to tell them to stop being such a creep about it, but they stopped before he could summon up the energy to open his eyes again.

The room was empty by the time he did.

***

**_‘I have not forgotten what you have done for me, child of elves.’_ ** _Her voice was small, like distant thunder._

_Well, it was good to know she pulled through okay, at least, even if she hadn’t done him any favours in return._

**_‘Do not misunderstand: you were pulled from my sanctum before I had time to recover my strength. Even a goddess cannot bless what she cannot find.’_ **

_He couldn’t help but feel like there was irony inherent in that somewhere. He was too tired to decide how._

**_‘In having saddled himself with guilt for a thing in which he is guiltless, my son hides from me when he visits you, and in doing so, has hidden you from me as well.’_ **

_His heart did something funny._

**_‘Yes, child of elves. He has been here many times.’_ ** _Something like a contemplative silence. He felt her breath on his hair. **‘He supposes himself to have had some greater part and power in this ordeal than he truly did, and so, believes himself responsible for your plight. It may be he fears to speak to you.’**_

_The thought both hurt him and made him angry._

**_‘He is a coward, and his strange desire to dwell on things that cannot be changed often makes him useless, as well. Do not hold these failings against me, Taako, child of elves.’_ **

_He didn’t even know where to start parsing that, so he didn’t even try. He just lay in the dark of her domain and listened to her tremendous heartbeat._

**_‘Before the age of Grummsh began, I dwelled beneath a great mountain. Now that it is ended, my children join me in rebuilding it. You saw the nothing my husband made of our world and thus you have become it. Even mortals of power as immense as yours cannot step within the boundaries of divinity without consequence.’_ **

_He felt sick._

_She laughed. It was neither kind nor unkind. **‘You do not listen, child of elves. I have told you I am rebuilding my mountain. So too shall I rebuild yours. Soon you too will regain your glory. With this, we will owe each other nothing.’**_

_He thought that was a pretty raw deal, considering he was only like this because of her._

He was falling again.

***

“-sorry I haven’t been here in a while, sir. Everybody keeps telling me to focus on my studies, and even when I tell them I can study here, they always say-”

“Agnes,” he wanted to say, “haven’t you learned how to cheat yet?”

He did not, of course. All that happened was that his mouth fell open and he breathed noisily through it. He felt betrayed. Luthic clearly wasn’t holding up her end of the deal.

“…Sir? Sir? Oh gosh. These could just be spontaneous movements, but I guess I should let someone know, just to be safe. I’ll be right back, sir-”

He could still hear Angus calling for someone when he sunk back into unconsciousness.

***

“He’s going to wake up.”

“Lup, it’s been… it’s been almost a year. I love Taako, too, you know that, but Lucretia’s right, we can’t keep living our lives like the whole world has stopped-”

“It’s only been eleven months. Eleven months next week. It hasn’t been a year.”

“Regardless, I’m not… I’m not telling you to give up on him. You know I would never do that. But this isn’t living. The way you’ve been this past… these past eleven months, it might as well be you in that bed. We can’t keep pouring all our time into trying to fix something that… something that might not be fixable. We need to start trying to make things normal again.”

“How? Sorry, Bear, but how? How is anything supposed to be _normal_ again after this? He’s my brother, Barry, and you want me to just, what, pretend my _heart_ hasn’t been lying in this stupid fucking bed for almost a year? He never stopped looking for me, not until Lucretia made him forget. _You_ never stopped looking for me. How can you even suggest-”

“This is _different_ , Lup. He’s not missing. He’s just… not anywhere. It’s like he’s just gone-”

“How _dare_ you, Barry Bluejeans- my brother is not _gone_ -”

She was crying.

He realized he knew this because he could see her doing it. His eyes were open. It wasn’t as much effort as it had been before.

“-you _knew_ when you married me that Taako is my whole world, Barry. How could you even _say_ that-”

“I’m right here,” he tried to say. His mouth felt like a dry well. No sound came out. The bed shook as Lup pounded her fist against the mattress beside him. One of her tears fell on his cheek.

“Lup, I’m sorry, I’m just- I’m sorry. You’re not ready, and I shouldn’t have pushed you-”

“Backpedalling as always, huh, Barold?” he wanted to joke. All that came out was a wheeze too thin to even be heard over them fighting. Another tear fell on him. She was screaming now.

“Not _ready?_ When _exactly_ do you expect me to be ready? Should I make a note of it in my calendar so I know when you’re finally going to get fed up, is that it, Bluejeans? Tell me, what’s the deadline on my fucking _grief_ -”

There were so many things he wanted to say, and so many things he could have.

Instead, the thin whisper that came out of him in that breathless moment before Lup had inhaled enough to continue shouting or Barry had started trying to soothe her again was just the underwhelming,

“Just fuck already, cree- _zus_ ,”

which was both a less cool and substantially weirder thing to say to his sister than he’d hoped for.

He could hear his own heartbeat in the silence that followed.

Lup stared at him. A final drop fell as she lowered her tearstained face. It hit the pillow beside him.

Barry was frozen in the middle of adjusting the nosepieces on his glasses. It was something he did obsessively when he was stressed.

Taako looked at Lup, then at Barry, then back at Lup.

“Look that good, huh?” he asked, which would’ve been a better first line, and which he would claim his was until his dying day.

***

Magnus visited him, and Merle, and the rest of the crew of the Starblaster, as well as Bureau employees he both remembered and didn’t. Angus insisted on studying at his bedside and trying to engage him in conversations about the subjects he was reviewing, citing some sort of dubious nonsense about losing brain mass that sounded like the kid was saying he’d gotten dumber while he was down for the count. Even Jess the Beheader stopped by to make awkward conversation and then leave as soon as it seemed appropriate.

Kravitz lingered in his room trying to be helpful and generally just making a nuisance of himself in every moment he could spare, as did Lup.

He didn’t see Brad once.

He tried not to think about. Thinking about it just made him angry.

It was another full month before they let him go home- all the money and magic and science in the world couldn’t completely prevent the effects of nearly a year of complete immobility, they said. He was still shaky the day they let him go.

He limped out of Lucas Miller’s home supported by his sister on one side and his boyfriend on the other and complained the whole way home in the battlewagon. Lup burst into tears for no reason halfway through the drive.

Kravitz intermittently went skeletal and refused to explain why.

***

It was another two months of bed rest before he was actually able to move around on his own with any consistency.

Some days he could cook and clean and do almost all of the usual showy nonsense he got up to in the kitchen.

Other days he couldn’t stand for long periods without assistance.

Brad had not called. Brad had not visited. No one at all seemed to have seen or heard from Brad since he’d woken up, except for possibly Lucretia, who just averted her eyes and said nothing no matter how much he yelled at her.

***

It was seven months after he woke up that he finally realized he was being worried over and watched to a point of near-imprisonment.

Nobody let him go anywhere alone. When Kravitz worked, Lup stayed with him, and when both Kravitz and Lup were working, Magnus or Merle or Angus or someone else would show up inexplicably and just hang around the house all day until they got home.

Every time he started to suggest wanting to go anywhere near the moon base, everyone changed the subject.

This would not do, he decided.

He hadn’t spent the last year and a half of his life recovering from his involvement in an insane divine war he’d never asked to be a part of so Brad could ignore him.

He was, at this point, housing the sort of simmering fury everyone who knew him knew meant trouble was coming at some point, no matter what anyone did to try to defuse it.

So on a Thursday in late spring he climbed through his bathroom window and scared everyone he knew absolutely senseless.

***

This time, he knew where Brad lived, so he didn’t have to talk to anyone. He burnt through so many spell slots casting Invisibility and Blink that he started to feel like he was participating in a major heist, not breaking into his, at this point, probably _ex_ -boyfriend’s home.

It had occurred to him that Brad may have left the Bureau. There was only one way to be sure.

He cast Knock on the door without even caring about the sound it produced. Gone were the days when he skulked around throwing holes and crawling through them.

He walked into Brad’s quarters through the door this time.

And they were still Brad’s quarters: nothing had changed. The stamps were still there, as was the sagging couch, the bookshelf, the huge bathtub, and the bed.

He flopped down on the bed and waited.

He’d gotten unexpectedly good at it in the last year and a half. There was a lot of forced patience involved in being stuck in his own head.

***

At five-forty-five in the morning on Friday, Brad arrived home. He was talking to someone on his Stone.

“No, Director, I haven’t seen him,” he was saying as he entered. “I don’t know why you think he’d come here.”

He missed what she said in response. After it became obvious Brad wasn’t coming to the bedroom, he rolled to his feet and padded casually after him.

“No. I doubt he wants to see me, Director. No, I haven’t.”

Taako shadowed him as he moved from the living room to the kitchen, almost amused enough at how completely unaware Brad seemed to be of his proximity to ignore the cold fury he was feeling.

“Of course. I’ll let you know if anything happens.”

Brad tucked away his Stone.

Taako waited.

Brad just sort of stood there with his hands on the counter, staring at apparently nothing.

Taako waited.

And waited.

No matter how intense the training, there was no cure for a naturally impatient personality.

“So _this_ is what you do with your time now? _Huh_.” he mocked. Brad whirled around, accidentally sweeping a knife block off his counter. One of them clattered across the floor and stopped by Taako’s foot. “Been a while, Stamps.”

“Taako,” Brad said. He didn’t look frightened, just stunned.

“Bradson,” Taako answered.

“Taako,” Brad repeated. His eyebrows were doing something.

Taako clicked his tongue, mustering his patience. “Brad,” he said again.

“…Taako?” He had no idea what Brad’s face was doing.

“As hilarious as this bit is, Stamps, Taako’s got some questions,” Taako said, putting his hands on his hips. “Here’s the big one: what the _fuck, Brad?”_ He didn’t mean to yell.

“I’m sorry,” Brad said immediately, raising his hands in surrender. “I’m so sorry, Taako, I didn’t mean to-”

“To what?” he demanded. “You didn’t mean to _what_? What is it you didn’t mean to do, Bradson? Let me know you didn’t die? Let me know you cared either way that _I_ didn’t die? What, Brad?”

“This never should have happened,” Brad babbled, “if you’d never gotten involved with me, this never would’ve happened to you, and-”

Taako reared back like he’d been slapped. He tried to interject, but Brad seemed to have uncorked a well that showed no sign of going dry any time soon.

“-was the only reason you were there, and you should’ve been at home with Kravitz, and-”

“Hey-” He tried to interject. There seemed to be no stopping Brad.

“-and I’m grateful- we’re all grateful, please don’t misunderstand- but you almost _died_ and that is my fault and it’s not something that should have happened in the first-”

“ _I HAVE DIED_ -” Taako shouted. Brad’s mouth finally snapped closed. “-nineteen times,” Taako finished. “Here’s a thought, Bradson: _not everything is about you_ ,” he said icily.

 Brad just stared at him, dark eyes wide. He looked like he hadn’t been sleeping well, Taako thought.

“I have watched entire planar systems be consumed because I couldn’t find the Light of Creation, and until we defeated the Hunger, that was something I just _lived with_ ,” he seethed. “Because here’s the thing: when I got on the Starblaster, I didn’t sign up for that. None of us did. We were supposed to be _explorers_. I never signed up to fight a fucking universe-destroying horror. I did because I had to. But you know what?”

Brad said nothing.

“It was never about _me_. The Hunger didn’t become the way it was because of _me_. It didn’t do what it did because of _me_ ,” he hissed. “And I don’t give a shit if it makes you feel like the universe is less terrifying if you believe you could’ve done something about what happened, because guess what: when you climbed on board the Taako Express™, that is not what you signed up for, my man.”

Brad opened his mouth. “I don’t-”

“ _No_ ,” Taako snarled. “You don’t. And you don’t interrupt me, not this time,” he snapped. “It doesn’t matter who you are. It doesn’t matter how powerful you are. It doesn’t matter how hard you work. Sometimes life is watching a world burn and knowing there’s fucking _nothing_ you can do to stop it. Sometimes you don’t get to be the hero. Sometimes you’re nothing but a spectator. That’s just how life works,” he said. “So you don’t get to pretend you’re doing me a favour by running away from me because you’re scared shitless to admit you don’t really matter on a cosmic scale.”

Brad looked stunned.

“Me, Lup, Barry, Merle, Magnus, Lucretia, Davenport- none of us signed up to spend the rest of our lives not being able to show our faces in public without people falling all over themselves. None of us signed up to spend a hundred years running for our lives. None of us signed up to die _over and over again_ ,” he seethed. “But you know what, Brad? That’s still what happened. Sometimes you don’t _choose_ to be a hero. Sometimes it’s something that happens to you because the other option is death and you’re not so big on that.”

Brad was just looking at him.

“Let’s try this again,” Taako said coldly. “What the _fuck, Brad?”_

Brad just sort of opened his mouth and then closed it again.

“Did you not want to see me? Taako saves the day and now you’re done with him? Is that it?” he demanded.

Brad looked like he’d been slapped. “That’s not- of course I wanted to see you,” he said.

There was heat building behind his eyes. If he started crying he was going to throw himself off the moon again, he decided. “So why didn’t you?”

“I was scared,” Brad said plaintively. “I didn’t know what you’d think of me. Everything happened and I just- I froze. I should’ve-”

“You ‘should’ve done’ nothing,” Taako interrupted, rolling his eyes. “You did what everyone else there did: nothing. Because that’s what people normally do in that situation. Feeling like you’re special doesn’t mean you are.”

Brad flinched but said nothing.

Taako held his arms out to the sides, raising his chin imperiously. “You couldn’t fuck up bad enough to kill me if you _tried_ , my man,” he scoffed.

Brad offered him a weak smile and then looked at the wall over his head.

Taako’s guts churned. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. “So this is it, then?”

He’d clearly caught Brad off-guard. “What?”

“Is this it?” he repeated. “Is this the part where you finally dip because things got too crazy? Everyone gets there eventually.” He swallowed against a lump in his throat, trying to act casual. “I’m not gonna be pissed if it is. Just don’t lie to me about it.”

Brad’s expression was going through some weird evolutions. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

“It… it honestly never even occurred to me that you’d want to see me again after all this,” he admitted. “I thought you’d blame me.”

Taako shrugged. “You didn’t sign up for it any more than I did. The only thing I’m mad at you for right now is ghosting me, homie.”

Brad flinched and smiled simultaneously at that. It was a very complicated look. “I’m sorry, Taako,” he said again, “I was scared.”

“So is that a ‘yeah, this is it’ or what? Because you still haven’t answered literally the one question I asked you,” Taako bullied.

Brad started to look a little tense. “Do you… want it to be?”

Something about this felt familiar in a way that was nostalgic yet unpleasant. “Do I want it to be what?”

“Do you want it to be… over? For us?” Brad asked. He looked like he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer.

Taako stared at him. “Okay, this got dumb. This one got dumb real fast,” he complained, twisting his hand in Brad’s lanyard. Brad glanced down at it nervously. “Why is it always like this with you, Bradson?” he asked, and then did his best to plant a kiss on the biggest nerd on the moon. 

And he did.

***

 

**Author's Note:**

> orc facts: everything changes from here on out
> 
> thank you for coming to my TAZ talk i've been nah_tho and it's been a pleasure to be here
> 
> edit: what if cyberpunk AU next. thoughts?? lmao jokes i already started writing
> 
>    
>  _“Seems I’ve found you, Taako,” Kravitz barked, accent thick and unpleasant. The blue air started to sizzle as a rift appeared in the alley._
> 
>  
> 
> _Oops. Uh-oh. Whoops, Taako thought._
> 
>  
> 
>   _Once, he’d caught Kravitz unawares, reporting in through his Stone, and his voice had been unrecognizable: measured, silken, gorgeous. He wanted another taste, and he’d been listening to Kravitz interview a vendor in the hopes he’d get his wish._
> 
> _This wasn’t the first time it had gotten him in trouble._
> 
> _He took off running as the rift opened. Out of it stepped a golem: a thing of raw crystalline shards floating in formation, connected and controlled by tendons of arcane energy. It was both beautiful and ugly._
> 
> _Taako had seen it enough times for the shine to have worn off. He knew enough to know it wasn’t Kravitz’ true form, by now._
> 
> _He was looking forward to one day putting a face to the name._
> 
> _For now, though, he just ran. Loose bits of gravel and broken pavement ground under his boots as he ran. His feet seemed to hit the ground on a beat._
> 
> _The sun was going down; the neon was lighting up._
> 
> April 3rd: lmao decided i hated what i'd started writing and restarted it. now it's shadowrun


End file.
